A Palestinian university lecturer taught during a recent Palestinian Authority TV program on religion that Moses, a Muslim, brought "the Muslims of the Children of Israel out of Egypt." He refers to the subsequent Israeli conquest of the Land of Israel as the "first Palestinian liberation... of Palestine." This conquest, he taught, was led not by Joshua, as the Bible tells, but by Saul (Talut) who is also said to have slayed Goliath.

While some of this is retelling of Islamic tradition, some of it is a distortion of even the Quran for political purposes. The Quran refers to the "Children of Israel" in their land in many chapters (e.g., Sura 5), but it never refers to them or anyone else as "Palestinians." Likewise the Quran never refers to Israel's conquest as a "Palestinian" conquest. The lecturer on PA TV, however, deviates from Islamic tradition, and calls the nation of Israel's conquest of the Land of Israel "the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine."

The following is the interview with Dr. Omar Ja'ara, lecturer at Al-Najah University in Nablus and specialist in Israeli affairs, on PA TV religion program:

"We must make clear to the world that David in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to David in the Quran, Solomon in the Hebrew Bible is not connected to Solomon in the Quran, and neither is Saul or Joshua son of Nun [of the Bible].

We have a great leader, Saul, [in the Quran] who defeated the nation of giants and killed Goliath. This is a great Muslim victory. The Muslims of the Children of Israel went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, and unfortunately, many researchers deny the Exodus of those oppressed people who were liberated by a great leader, like Moses the Muslim, the believing leader, the great Muslim,

who was succeeded by Saul, the leader of these Muslims in liberating Palestine.

This was the first Palestinian liberation through armed struggle to liberate Palestine from the nation of giants led by Goliath. This is our logic and this is our culture."

Hamas newspaper Palestine Times has a featured article celebrating the ten year anniversary of the bombing of the Arab-owned Matza restaurant in Haifa, that killed 16 Israeli civilians. The article includes photos of the bomber as well as of the devastation to the restaurant, whose roof collapsed from the force of the explosion.

The article claims that the bomber intended to blow himself up in the nearby Grand Canyon shopping center but the security there made him change his plans to the nearby restaurant filled with Israeli families enjoying their Passover vacation.

The Matza restaurant was one of those rare places in Israel where Jews felt they could find refuge in the company of Arabs.

But it turned out, none of them were safe. Although the restaurant's proprietors and many of its staff members are Arabs, a suicide bomber from the Islamic group Hamas walked through the door today and detonated his charge in the middle of the room, blasting screws and other shrapnel into people eating a late lunch.

He killed himself and 14 others, blowing the roof off the restaurant and spraying blood against the chrome table legs and glass out into the parking lot.

Witnesses described a wreckage of burning bodies and jumbled furniture, in which one woman bent over a wounded son, beside the bodies of her husband and another child. The dead included Israeli Arabs, the police said, but the authorities were still trying to identify some of the remains tonight.

The attack shocked both Arabs and Jews, who felt that the restaurant was a haven. ''Everyone knew this was an Arab restaurant, and we were not afraid,'' said Zeghain Amar, an Israeli Arab whose father, the Matza's cashier, was wounded. ''We had excellent relations between Arabs and Jews -- regular customers. I'm very, very upset.''

Interestingly, this happened right at the beginning of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield that was meant to stop such attacks. The New York Times quoted Israeli "experts" as to how it is impossible to stop suicide bombings:

Many Israeli commentators are wondering how it will stop suicide attackers, who are now striking almost anywhere, among religious Jews, secular Jews and now even Israeli Arabs. The attackers have been men and women, young and old, Palestinian and even, in one case, an Israeli Arab.

Nahum Barnea, the respected columnist for the newspaper Yediot Ahronot, wrote today that Palestinian terrorism was becoming ''a popular sport, the grand aspiration of thousands of young Palestinian girls and boys.

''You can kill, deport and deter professionals,'' he added. ''There is no military way to fight suicide bombers.''

We know now that Israel did stop the suicide bombings, with a combination of offensive thrusts into terrorist enclaves, a huge push to improve intelligence, and the building of the security fence.

The "experts" were wrong, which is a good thing to keep in mind when you read analyses today about how other things are supposedly impossible as well.

Palestine Today reports that Hamas and the PA have reached a "partial agreement" to the fuel crisis in Gaza.

According to a senior political source in Gaza, power plant fuel and will enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

He said that the price of liter of industrial fuel to be supplied on a daily basis to Gaza would be 3.3 shekels (or 3.71 shekels), excluding tax.

If this is true, it means that the PA will heavily subsidize the cost of fuel to Gaza to a price similar to the price of smuggled Egyptian fuel, which is itself subsidized by Egypt for the use of Egyptians.

Assuming that the heavy-duty diesel is priced roughly similar petrol used in cars, the PA is agreeing to subsidize 60% of the cost, as Israeli fuel is now about 8 shekels a liter. (That includes high Israeli taxes, though - h/t Shtrudel)

This means that Hamas' blackmail has worked, and it has managed to use the threat of suffering Gazans to avoid paying market rates on fuel - and allowing Hamas to tax the cheap fuel for its own profit. And Western powers will now be paying for Hamas to be enriched by this political blackmail through PA subsidies.

According to this poorly translated and unsourced article, unemployed Gazans are waiting for hours at gas pumps to buy fuel at 3.75 shekels a liter in order to resell it for 5.2 shekels on the black market, earning about 350 shekels a day.

Palestine Times reports that Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister, holds the "Zionist occupation" to be "fully responsible" for the deaths of 3 Gaza children who died in a tragic fire when fuel their parents were storing in their house exploded, probably from a candle. Haniyeh said that Israel was at fault for its "siege of Gaza and preventing fuel for electricity," which is of course a complete lie: Israel is willing to provide all the fuel necessary, but Hamas is refusing to accept fuel from Israel.

Speaking to Gulf News, Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas spokesman, said that the failure to deliver fuel to Gaza and the power shortage has paralysed life there.

"The death of the three children is a crime and Israel is responsible for it."

"The victims' family and Gaza will not forgive Israel for this crime," he said.

Barhoum said that Israel and some groups in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) were also responsible for causing a delay in delivering fuel to Gaza Strip.

"Egypt is required to act and come to the rescue," he said.

He called on Arab countries to immediately intervene to save the Gaza Strip from an environmental and humanitarian disaster that Hamas has deliberately caused.

Hamas is cynically promoting Gazan suffering in order to extort money and aid from Arab states. And still none of the leaders of those states are willing to publicly respond that they'll only help when Hamas acts like they care about their own people. The fear of Islamists taking Hamas' side seems to be enough to cause them to keep any of their reservations about Hamas' manipulations to themselves.

Meanwhile, Gazans are waiting in lines from morning to night to get a gallon of petrol.

A U.N. report ridiculed worldwide for lavishing praise on the Qaddafi regime’s human rights record was unanimously adopted today by the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council, with president Laura Dupuy Lasserre overruling the objection made in the plenary by UN Watch. (Click here for video; see text below.)

After it was first exposed by UN Watch last year, the report card giving high marks to Qaddafi was mocked by the New York Times, The Economist and other major media worldwide, causing a red-faced UN to postpone the report’s adoption repeatedly — until today.

Said the Times:

“Until Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s violent suppression of unrest in recent weeks, the United Nations Human Rights Council was kind in its judgment of Libya. In January, it produced a draft report on the country that reads like an international roll call of fulsome praise, when not delicately suggesting improvements. Evidently, within the 47-nation council, some pots are loath to call kettles black, at least until events force their hand. Last week Libya was suspended from the body, and the report was shelved.”

Even ardent defenders of the council have recently slammed the report. After UN Watch’s recent protest, Suzanne Nossel, the head of Amnesty USA and former top human rights official in the Obama Administration, described the report as “abhorrent” and called for a complete “redo.”

Here is UN Watch's Hillel Neuer telling the UN what a joke the report is:

In fact, the report iseven worsethan Neuer implies in his short speech. Here are some parts:

Algeria noted the efforts of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to promote human rights, which reflected the country’s commitment to complying with Human Rights Council resolutions and cooperating with the international community.

Qatar praised the legal framework for the protection of human rights and freedoms, including, inter alia, its criminal code and criminal procedure law, which provided legal guarantees for the implementation of those rights.

The Syrian Arab Republic praised the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for its serious commitment to and interaction with the Human Rights Council and its mechanisms. It commended the country for its democratic regime based on promoting the people’s authority through the holding of public conferences, which enhanced development and respect for human rights, while respecting cultural and religions traditions.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea praised the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for its achievements in the protection of human rights.

Bahrain noted that the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had adopted various policies aimed at improving human rights.

Palestine commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for the consultations held with civil society in the preparation of the national report, which demonstrated its commitment to the improved enjoyment of human rights. Palestine praised the country for the Great Green Document on Human Rights.

Saudi Arabia commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’s achievements in its constitutional, legislative and institutional frameworks, which showed the importance that the country attached to human rights.

Tunisia noted progress made by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, such as the adoption of the Great Green Charter, which was very comprehensive and enshrined fundamental freedoms and rights as enshrined in international human rights instruments.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela acknowledged the efforts of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to promote economic, social and cultural rights, especially those of children.

Jordan welcomed the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’s achievements in the promotion and protection of human rights, including the establishment of institutions, particularly in thejudiciary system.

Oman commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for its diligent efforts in the field of human rights and for making them its priority.

Egypt commended the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for progress in building a comprehensive national human rights framework of institutions and in drafting legislation and supporting its human resources in that area.

The Islamic Republic of Iran noted that the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had implemented a number of international human rights instruments and had cooperated with relevant treaty bodies. It noted with appreciation the establishment of the National Human Rights Committee as an independent national human rights institution, and the provision of an enabling environment for non-governmental organizations.

Pakistan praised the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for measures taken both in terms of legislation and in practice, noting with appreciation that it was a party to most of the core human rights treaties.

Viet Nam congratulated the delegation on the quality of the national report. It noted with satisfaction the commitment of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to the protection and promotion of the human rights of its people.

Even Western nations would go out of their way to find something nice to say about Libya even as they voiced concerns.

The United States of America supported the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’s increased engagement with the international community. It called on the country to comply with its human rights treaty obligations. It expressed concern about reports of the torture of prisoners and about the status of freedom of expression and association, including in its legislation, which often resulted in the arrest of people for political reasons.

Canada welcomed improvements made by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in its respect for human rights, specifically the recent legislation that granted women married to foreigners the right to pass on their Libyan nationality to their children, as well as the acknowledgement of the deaths of hundreds of Abu Salim prisoners in 1996 and the first incountry release of a report by an international non-governmental organization in 2009.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland welcomed visits by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. It encouraged the country to consider further visits and to issue a standing invitation to the United Nations special procedures. It remained concerned about the enjoyment of the freedoms of expression and association, and asked for further details in that regard, including on the development of a new press law. The United Kingdom encouraged improvements in Libyan prison standards.

Only two countries had nothing positive to say:

France referred to the situation of refugees; allegations concerning arbitrary detention, torture, ill treatment and enforced disappearance; the death penalty, which remained in force for a large number of crimes; the absence of non-governmental organizations with expertise in the field of human rights; and the severe restrictions on freedom of expression and association.

Israel noted that The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya should live up to the membership standards set forth in General Assembly resolution 60/251 and serve as a model in the protection of human rights; while, in reality, its membership in the Council served to cover the ongoing systemic suppression, in law and in practice, of fundamental rights and freedoms.

If you want proof that the UN Human Rights Council is a complete and utter joke, the fact that this resolution was adopted - in 2012 - is all the proof you need.

At the end of each year, the Committee to Protect Journalists counts the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide and lists the countries in which they’re locked up.

These data are very helpful, but I think we can consider them under a new lamp by taking into account each country’s size. China and Eritrea, for example, have about the same number of journalists rotting in prison, 27 and 28 respectively. But the population of China is over 250 times that of the small dictatorship.

Any country that unjustly arrests or imprisons a single journalist is democratically suspect, of course, and that includes you, America. Ratings of press freedom in the United States tanked after 2011, as counts of arrested journalists in this country soared. Still, though police in the United States tend to arrest journalists filming or otherwise documenting unrest, their bosses usually get embarrassed at the media blowback and drop the charges. Imprisoning journalists for months or years at a time is another matter and, other than the outright murder of journalists in places like Russia and Syria, the long-term jailing of reporters is the offense with which the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is most concerned.

For a new take on this scourge, I quickly calculated the highest twelve ratios of jailed journalists to a country’s population size.

So we see that according to this criterion, Israel jails more journalists per capita than any other nation except for Eritea.

Sounds damning, right?

Except that it is a meaningless statistic. The size of the country's population has nothing to do with how many journalists are in the country. Israel has far more journalists than most countries that are much larger, because there is such intense interest in Israel. Moreover, Israel is liberal in allowing journalists to have access to the nation, as opposed to, say, practically every other nation in the Middle East.

If you want to see which nations jail the most reporters per-something, you must compare it to the total number of reporters - not the total population of the nation. To restate the question - if you are a reporter in Country X, what are the odds that you will be arrested? Comparing the number of jailed journalists to the total population of the nation doesn't tell you anything meaningful.

This is not to blame Justin Martin at CJR - at first blush his metric sounds like it might be meaningful - but his initial assumption is completely wrong.

Unfortunately, I cannot find immediately how many journalists are in Israel. Here's a list of journalists per million in North America and here's one with newspaper journalists per million for many other countries, but not Israel. I would be willing to bet that if you find out those numbers, and look at number of jailed reporters per thousand reporters, you will see Israel going way, way down that list.

This is all besides the fact of the circumstances of the imprisonment, which is a whole other topic. Given that Arab media openly says that their journalists are part of the war against Israel, it is but a small step for some of them to step over that line. But even without going into that, this is a perfect example of a statistic that sounds like it is illuminating some truth - and in fact it is obscuring it.

UPDATE: I was too charitable. Martin really dislikes Israel and chances are pretty good that he gleefully published this metric just to castigate the Jewish state. (h/t Soccer Dad)

The CPJ report says that Hamas has jailed three journalists. Divide 3 by 1.5 million (the population of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip according to the Palestinian Authority) and you have a jail-rate that dwarfs Israel. Does the CJR (Columbia Journalism Review) article’s failure to mention this indicate anything about the author’s (Justin Martin) agenda? Does Martin’s statement that “Israel, though, wants to be called a modern democracy and gets cranky when critics point out that it is not” tell us anything about his agenda?

The CPJ report tells us nothing about its methodology: how it conducted its “census,” how it decided who to classify as a “journalist,” etc. Even if it had a reliable methodology for figuring out what journalists were arrested where, the CRJ would still not pretend to be comprehensive; it claims only to be “a snapshot of those incarcerated at midnight on December 1, 2011” that does “not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year.”

The CPJ report tells us nothing about how it examined the charges; there is nothing to indicate that all the persons who were arrested were in fact arrested due to journalistic activity, rather than say, contempt of court or activities on behalf of a terrorist organization. For instance, the CJR report lists Raed al-Sharif as a jailed journalist, while also telling us that Israel has stated that he was detained due to “involvement in terrorist activity.” It is worth noting that international law sometimes requires the jailing of journalists. For instance, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted several Rwandans for genocide, incitement to genocide, and crimes against humanity committed by broadcasts on Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. This is surely relevant to the detention of, for example, Walid Khalid Harb, director of the Hamas newspaper Falastin.

I noted last night in Twitter that the US arrested scores of journalists during the Occupy demonstrations. Also, I mentioned that just last month India arrested a journalist - an Iranian implicated in the terrorist bombing against Israeli embassy personnel. Being a journalist doesn't make one immune from being imprisoned when one does a crime.

zondag 1 april 2012

I cannot count the number of times that I have reported where Palestinian Arabs claim to have witnessed an attack by Israelis where Arabs ended up injured or dead, the IDF denies it, and it turns out the IDF is right.Yet when these incidents are reported the IDF denial - when mentioned at all - is always stuck around paragraph 12 after the reader already assumes that the Arab witnesses are telling the truth.Every reporter should put IDF denials in the first paragraph of any report like this, and should note that the IDF's track record on admitting and denying its activities has been pretty good. There certainly has been spin, but the track record for lies belongs, hands down, to the Palestinian Arabs.

On Saturday, the aide told Ma'an he was injured by a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli forces. She said the police were informed of the circumstances during their visit to the hospital.

An Israeli military spokeswoman disputed Barghouti's account and said he was attacked by other Palestinians. He was "trying to convince youth in (Qalandiya) to riot," she said on Twitter.

A report on the case released by the police media office said Barghouti was injured in an altercation and taken to hospital. Police opened an investigation to determine the circumstances, the report says.

Barghouti heads the Palestinian National Initiative and is a former presidential candidate.

So what happened? As usual, the IDF seems to be correct and the Palestinian Arab accusers were lying.

From (of all places) Mondoweiss, quoting an account by Jalal Abukhater:

As I arrived to Qalandia, first thing I saw was a large crowd of protesters with most carrying Red PFLP flags and orange PNI [Palestinian National Initiative] flags. As I walked down, I saw Mustafa Barghouti being evacuated into an ambulance at the Qalandia field hospital and Fateh guys were attacking PNI people. As Mustafa entered the ambulance, angry crowds continued to attack Mustafa and his group, a fight broke out between both sides. Mustafa was also beaten inside the ambulance. Weapon used in fighting was sticks which held flags. The ambulance which carried Mustafa had its rear glass broken and it rushed away. A while later I saw PNI organizers calling on all PNI people to leave the demo, clashes continued and hundreds remained present at the demo.

Reason behind all this, according to eye witnesses who were there before I was, is that PNI group acted separately and didn't follow the general plan agreed upon by all groups, and they marched towards the checkpoint rushing during the prayer to beat all other groups and be first there. Also, none of them carried Palestinian flags..all carried PNI flags.

The Palestine News Network reported that Barghouti’s office phoned its editors and requested that they refrain from publishing the news about the assault.

Ah, the truth hurts - so lets resort to censorship.

I cannot count the number of times that I have reported where Palestinian Arabs claim to have witnessed an attack by Israelis where Arabs ended up injured or dead, the IDF denies it, and it turns out the IDF is right.

Yet when these incidents are reported the IDF denial - when mentioned at all - is always stuck around paragraph 12 after the reader already assumes that the Arab witnesses are telling the truth.

Every reporter should put IDF denials in the first paragraph of any report like this, and should note that the IDF's track record on admitting and denying its activities has been pretty good. There certainly has been spin, but the track record for lies belongs, hands down, to the Palestinian Arabs.

That is no accident, according to Anne-Marie Revcolevschi: They try to stay as far away as possible from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she says. Under no circumstances do she and her colleagues wish to get dragged into discussing the question of how much Israelis know about the Nakba.

(...)

Among the personalities who are affiliated with the NGO is Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh, but despite the attempt to separate the subject of the Holocaust from the conflict − enlisting Palestinians in the endeavor has so far proved otherwise unsuccessful; at best they simply do not come to events organized by the Aladdin Project, as happened in East Jerusalem. At worst they refuse to talk about the Holocaust without also mentioning the Nakba and the occupation.

This theory seems right: Israel cannot be understood without understanding the place of the Holocaust among the components of Israeli identity, and whoever does not understand his enemy will also not be able to make peace with him.

The latest research on Arab attitudes to Nazi Germany shows that there were Arab and Muslim circles that were opposed to Hitler for political and ideological reasons, including the concern that the persecution of Jews in Europe would galvanize them to migrate to Palestine. But Arab support for the Nazis was more widespread, and there were Arabs who favored the annihilation of the Jews. Furthermore, over time, the more the Holocaust was used as a justification for the establishment of the State of Israel − the more the tendency among Arabs to view it as a Zionist myth and to deny it entirely grew. This trend reached a peak with the international conference of Holocaust deniers that was held in 2006 in Tehran.

The latest research on Arab attitudes to Nazi Germany shows that there were Arab and Muslim circles that opposed Hitler, but support for the Nazis was widespread and, over time, Arabs saw the Holocaust as a Zionist myth.

Aladdin was a poor tailor's son who got rich thanks to a magic lamp, according to one of the stories in "One Thousand and One Nights." Reality, however, is more complex and difficult. But perhaps there is still something symbolic about the name "The Aladdin Project," a non-government organization that is based in France and aims to make the Arab and Muslim world more familiar with the history of the Holocaust. A difficult mission indeed.

The latest research on Arab attitudes to Nazi Germany shows that there were Arab and Muslim circles that were opposed to Hitler for political and ideological reasons, including the concern that the persecution of Jews in Europe would galvanize them to migrate to Palestine. But Arab support for the Nazis was more widespread, and there were Arabs who favored the annihilation of the Jews. Furthermore, over time, the more the Holocaust was used as a justification for the establishment of the State of Israel − the more the tendency among Arabs to view it as a Zionist myth and to deny it entirely grew. This trend reached a peak with the international conference of Holocaust deniers that was held in 2006 in Tehran.

All of this worried Anne-Marie Revcolevschi of Paris: Denial of the Holocaust in general, and in the Arab and Muslim states in particular, seemed to her to be a major threat to democracy and human rights, as well as to relations between Jews and Muslims. Dr. Revcolevschi, a 69-year-old French literature scholar, is a well-connected woman in her country, and identifies herself as a socialist. She has served as a consultant to France's Ministry for Higher Education and Research, and was director of the French Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah.

In March 2009 Revcolevschi launched the Aladdin Project along with other French figures, among them philosopher and politician Simone Veil, lawyer and Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, and Claude Lanzmann, the maker of the documentary "Shoah." Author Elie Weisel, who lives in the United States, also got involved in the organization.

The group's working assumption is quite simple: The more Arabs and Muslims know about the Holocaust, the less they will be inclined to deny it, and the greater the chance they will grow closer to Jews. The modus operandi was quite simple, at the outset: The Aladdin Project translated "The Diary of Anne Frank" into Arabic. Then they translated Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man" and a series of other well-known books about the Holocaust, including Raul Hilberg's pioneering work "The Destruction of the European Jews." All of the books can be downloaded from the Internet. "The Diary of Anne Frank" in Arabic has registered some 30,000 downloads to date.

They organized conferences and gatherings, visits to Auschwitz, and also subtitled Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah" into several languages of Islam. The nine-hour film was broadcast in full on Turkish television and also on an American television channel that broadcasts in Iran.

The Aladdin Project operates under the auspices of UNESCO; it has received public support from a slew of statesmen, including former prime minister of France Jacques Chirac, and several Muslim and Arab leaders − among them the president of Senegal, the king of Morocco, Prince Hassan of Jordan, the grand mufti of Egypt and others. The organization has done projects in Iraq. A large share of the project's budget comes from Jewish foundations, such as Safra and Rothschild, but among the dozens of Western individuals active in it there are almost no Israelis.

That is no accident, according to Anne-Marie Revcolevschi: They try to stay as far away as possible from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she says. Under no circumstances do she and her colleagues wish to get dragged into discussing the question of how much Israelis know about the Nakba.

Among the personalities who are affiliated with the NGO is Palestinian philosopher Sari Nusseibeh, but despite the attempt to separate the subject of the Holocaust from the conflict − enlisting Palestinians in the endeavor has so far proved otherwise unsuccessful; at best they simply do not come to events organized by the Aladdin Project, as happened in East Jerusalem. At worst they refuse to talk about the Holocaust without also mentioning the Nakba and the occupation.

This theory seems right: Israel cannot be understood without understanding the place of the Holocaust among the components of Israeli identity, and whoever does not understand his enemy will also not be able to make peace with him.

In any case, reality does not make things easy for the good people who run the Aladdin Project: Last week Anne-Marie Revcolevschi was staying in Jerusalem, and thus had the opportunity to attend the funeral of the victims of Islamist terror in Toulouse.